SPIA co-organized together with FAO, IFAD, the World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Department for International Development, a three-day convening, entitled ‘Inclusive agriculture and rural transformation: building a shared research agenda’, at FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy from June 19-21, 2019. The event aimed to build consensus toward clear and rigorous research and learning agenda focusing on inclusive rural and structural transformation. It brought together a range of experts to explore where we already see economic transitions underway, but ultimately move beyond observations of past transitions to a) probe how we can detect transformations that are ongoing, and cleanly and confidently understand their causal determinants and attributable consequences, b) share rigorous research using high-quality data to understand the impacts of particular approaches targeting agricultural productivity, diversification, and value chain development for rural poverty alleviation and c) develop a clearer forward-looking agenda for rigorous impact research as part of our efforts to achieve the related SDGs.